Cryptocurrency: WarOnCrypto - Tornado.Cash SW Speech CensorBanned by UST OFAC SDN and their Apologists

[grarpamp]

Pronoun game questionably diminishing to headline cause...

https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0916


Treasury’s clumsy approach to Tornado.cash is a threat to the future
of financial privacy
https://www.fightforthefuture.org/news/2022-08-09-statement-treasurys-clumsy-approach-to-tornado-cash-is-a-threat-to-the-future-of-financial-privacy

August 9, 2022, 5:34 PM

This statement can be attributed to Lia Holland (they/she),
Campaigns & Communications Director at Fight for the Future.

“In an effort to punish hackers and cybercriminals, Treasury just made a
clumsy attempt to sanction Tornado.cash, an open source protocol.
Tornado.cash was a mixing protocol that worked by letting many people send
Ethereum to a specific address, mixing all the cryptocurrency it holds
together, then letting those who had sent funds withdraw better-anonymized
money. Services like Tornado.cash exist because the permanent, public, and
immutable records kept on blockchains like Ethereum aren’t inherently
privacy-preserving. But after Treasury’s actions, the open source code
used to run this protocol has been censored, and developers contributing
to the protocol are reporting that their GitHub accounts have been
deleted.

Let us be clear, hackers and cybercriminals, as well as those that support
them, are deplorable and should be stopped—but not in a way that
compromises human rights and the first amendment.

Treasury’s sanctions were meant first as a tire-slash to the Lazarus
Group, cyberthieves affiliated with North Korea, who used Tornado.cash to
anonymise stolen Ethereum, and prevent them (and, it seems, anyone else
who was using it) from being able to withdraw from the service
anonymously.

It also seems that Treasury’s sanctions were meant as a warning shot to
projects attempting to build anonymous digital assets, and an attack on
the first amendment right to code.

Treasury did not only sanction the individuals or corporations involved
with the Lazarus Group; they sanctioned all the mechanisms—ethereum
addresses—by which the Tornado.cash protocol provides its blending
service, because that service was used by bad actors. This is a rough
equivalent to sanctioning the email protocol in the early days of the
internet, with the justification that email is often used to facilitate
phishing attacks. Tornado.cash is code, and rather than identify those who
were aiding and abetting criminals the Treasury simply sanctioned that
code. Code is speech.

Already, the Internet is feeling the chilling effects of this choice: the
open source code used to run Tornado.cash has been taken down from Github.
And unfortunately it seems that such an effect is exactly what the US
government was seeking.

In yesterday’s press release announcing sanctions against Tornado.cash,
Treasury states clearly that “while most virtual currency activity is
licit, it can be used for illicit activity”—essentially a statement
that could be made about cash. But as Politico reports "The Biden
administration wants cryptocurrency companies to voluntarily adopt
internationally agreed-upon technologies for combating money laundering,
including collecting all users’ personal information. The senior
Treasury official said the sanctions on Tornado Cash would send a strong
message to companies that still haven’t done this." (Bolded emphasis is
our own.)

Anonymity is not a crime, and there are many legitimate reasons to seek
anonymity in financial transactions. Privacy tools are important to, for
example, activists in authoritarian states where revealing financial
information could get someone jailed or executed. Anonymity, particularly
financial, may soon become essential for pregnant people seeking abortions
in the US, as well as supporters in states that criminalize donations to
that could be made about cash. But as Politico reports "The Biden
administration wants cryptocurrency companies to voluntarily adopt
internationally agreed-upon technologies for combating money laundering,
including collecting all users’ personal information. The senior
Treasury official said the sanctions on Tornado Cash would send a strong
message to companies that still haven’t done this." (Bolded emphasis is
our own.)

Anonymity is not a crime, and there are many legitimate reasons to seek
anonymity in financial transactions. Privacy tools are important to, for
example, activists in authoritarian states where revealing financial
information could get someone jailed or executed. Anonymity, particularly
financial, may soon become essential for pregnant people seeking abortions
in the US, as well as supporters in states that criminalize donations to
abortion funds or Planned Parenthood. Simply not wanting your financial
history surveilled by governments, corporations, stalkers, or other bad
actors is a legitimate reason to seek privacy-preserving technologies
online.

We ask that the Treasury focus more carefully on targeting bad
actors—rather than attempting to criminalize building and using privacy
tools or the simple act of writing or running open source software
code.”